BY MATTHEW BOULTON, CIRCA 1772

PERFUME-BURNERS
Perfume or ‘essence’ burners were highly fashionable in the 18th and 19th centuries, designed as both functional and decorative luxuries that gently scented domestic interiors. They typically burned pastilles, small compressed cones or lozenges often composed of powdered willow-wood, aromatic gums and resins, herbs and occasionally charcoal. Once lit, the pastilles smoldered slowly within the vessel, releasing a light plume of perfumed smoke through the finely pierced lids.

THE MODEL
This vase, with its laurel swags inspired by antiquity, derives from at least four sketches in Matthew Boulton’s Pattern Book I (p. 171), preserved in the Birmingham City Museum. Boulton produced a number of examples of this form in both marble and blue john, fully listed in Goodison, Matthew Boulton: Ormolu, London, 2002, p. 398, notes 529-533. Notable blue john examples include three pairs in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, a pair at Pavlovsk, and one in the collection of the Earl of Bradford at Weston Park, Shropshire (illustrated in Goodison, Ormolu: The Work of Matthew Boulton, London, 1974, pl. 134). A further single vase, formerly in the collections of the Princes of Pless, Schloss Fürstenstein, Silesia, was sold in the Apter-Fredericks sale at Christie’s, London, 19 January 2021, lot 37.

According to Goodison, the advanced quality of the casting suggests a date after 1770, reflecting Boulton’s ongoing refinement of ormolu in his workshop (ibid., p. 300).